On the Digital Playing Field: How We ''Do Sport'' with Networked

Games and Culture 7(5) 349-374 ª The Author(s) 2012 On the Digital Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1555412012454222 Playing Field: How http://gac.sagepub.com We ‘‘Do Sport’’ With Networked Computer Games Emma Witkowski1 Abstract In the following article, the author explores the notion of playing computer games as sports by sketching out the labors and sensations of Counter-Strike teams playing at pro/am e-sports local area network (LAN) tournaments. How players are engaged physically in practice and play is described in this qualitative study through the core themes of movement, haptic engagement, and the balanced body. Furthermore, the research describes how technologies in play are laboring actors too; the players and technologies in this study are rendered as networked, extended, and acting in and on the same fields of play. In asking is there a ‘‘sport’’ in e-sports, this study questions the legitimacy of a traditional sports ontology and simultaneously tackles the notion of engagement with computer game play as a legitimate sporting endeavor. Keywords e-sports, physicality, haptic engagement, movement, balance, Counter-Strike 1IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark Corresponding Author: Emma Witkowski, IT University of Copenhagen, Rued Langgaards Vej 7, Copenhagen, 2300, Denmark Email: [email protected] 350 Games and Culture 7(5) Introduction ‘‘Fun and challenging,’’ ‘‘adrenalin,’’ ‘‘competition,’’ ‘‘adrenalin,’’ and ‘‘adrenalin’’; these first, short-winded, explanations on motivation were made by five teammates talking about why they play their sport. The sport they engage in is the multiplayer first person shooter (FPS) Counter-Strike: Source (CSS); a game that was part of a local area network (LAN) tournament called The eXperience. The tournament offered a purse of €10.000 in CSS, which enticed teams of players from across Europe to sign up and compete. These young men (all the players encountered at this tournament were men in their late teens to early twenties) play this computer game under the heading of e-sports. E-sports commonly refer to an organized and competitive approach to playing computer games. For the past decade, this style of gaming has been played across networked computers where structured online computer gaming leagues and locally networked events have offered players a place to engage in serious or career competition. But a question remains to be asked: How are computer game players engaged in ‘‘doing sport’’? In this study, an exploration of the ‘‘sportiness’’ of e-sports is undertaken with a focus on the player practices of multiplayer FPS computer games CSS (Valve Corpo- ration, 2004) and Counter-Strike 1.6 (CS 1.6; Valve Corporation, 2003) at LAN tournaments. This article takes up two areas of contention which regularly arise in the consideration of e-sports as sports. The first part explores how player physicality man- ifests in this particular competitive context. The second part discusses the relationship between human performances and technologies; looking specifically at how the asso- ciation plays out in this e-sports discipline and in situations of play. These areas are discussed through the themes of human movement, balance and composure, haptic engagement, and the sensuousness of networked bodies and technologies. To date, e-sports has been given academic attention from the perspectives of the materiality of play (N. Taylor, 2009; T. L. Taylor, 2012), e-sports history (Lowood, 2010), expertise and expert play (Reeves, Brown, & Laurier, 2009; Wagner, 2006), as well as the assemblage of high performance play (Harper, 2010; Rambusch, Jakobsson, & Pargman, 2007; N. Taylor, 2009; T. L. Taylor, 2012). These studies all speak directly to or suggest the significance of the embodied player at the computer. What this article attempts to add to this growing area of study is a rigorous and phenomenologically attentive account of the bodies and technologies which are engaged in ‘‘doing e-sports.’’ The contributions of this article include a critical consideration of sporting ontologies as well as presenting fieldwork that describes how players realize and perform their networked sporting actions. The significance of this study is best seen in reference to traditional sports studies. In particular, by rigorously looking at how players ‘‘do’’ e-sports, this research might contribute to the discussion on what modern sport is or ‘‘could be’’ (formally, experientially, and culturally). In addition, networked team play offers concrete and challenging moments which can assist in the critical consideration of contemporary understandings of sports in terms of bodies and technologies in play. Witkowski 351 Approach Does not the title of ‘‘e-sports’’ present a splendid oxymoron? How can something be an ‘‘electronic sport’’? What might that be? Perhaps, it refers to happenings in professional tennis where several tournaments use Hawk-Eye technology, the ball tracking system that is called on as an electronic lines person. A reasonable guess might be a sports simulation—a digital playing field or perhaps a tournament in laser tag— where technologies not only extend the capabilities of the body but also act on the field of play (Giddings, 2006; T. L. Taylor, 2009). With the emphasis placed on the ‘‘e’’, the electronic, rather than the physics of the player performing in that space, a common sense impulse might be aroused to disqualify any claim for an electronic game to be classified as a sport. Traditional sporting understandings are often imagined through a moving player, a visibly active body (Edwards, 1973; Hargreaves, 2004). Limbs moving across a court or field are the culturally recognizable form of a body in ‘‘sporting motion’’ (Meier, 1988; Osterhoudt, 1973). As a potential sporting activ- ity, e-sports is likely to strike a somewhat unrecognizable chord for those who have never navigated the field of play in an FPS, or combined a series of movements, per- fectly timed and positioned, in a real-time strategy or fighting game (excellent exam- ples of e-sports/high-performance play from other genres can be found in the following literature: Harper, 2010; Lowood, 2010; Schenkhuizen, 2010; Sirlin, 2005). In an attempt to describe the state of e-sports and gain a rich description of player practices and lived experiences of play, this study draws primarily from observations and semistructured interviews with Counter-Strike players and organizers of two major pro/am Scandinavian e-sports tournaments held in 2009—The eXperience (Denmark—CSS tournament) and DreamHack Winter 2009 (Sweden—CS 1.6 and CSS tournaments). Additional observations, interviews, and photo documentation were conducted at the 2010 World Cyber Games (WCG) CS 1.6 grand finals held in Los Angeles. This last mentioned field work was conducted as a saturation check, and to assemble further video and photo records of the core themes. At these LAN tournaments, each spanning 3 to 4 days, I observed and took field notes from early round play, upper/lower bracket play-offs, and the grand-finals. At The eXperience, 15 semistructured player interviews ranging from individual to group interviews were conducted on site. The interviews were taken from five different teams from four different countries representing professional, semiprofes- sional, and amateur rankings. The interviewed players and teams ranged from tournament and purse winners from the upper bracket (e.g., a fully funded franchise team) to teams that placed in the bottom bracket, taking home only the experience of play (such as a self-funded amateur team from Scandinavia). Furthermore, formal and informal interviews were conducted with the tournament organizers on site, as well as post-tournament. At DreamHack Winter 2009 (DHW), four additional player interviews were conducted from one amateur CS 1.6 team. The research undertaken at DHW was focused on observing players and teams ‘‘over-the- shoulder’’ and by following teams via various spectatorship options, including being 352 Games and Culture 7(5) seated at one of the on-site stages; via online websites (Twitter score updates/commentary and live broadcasts of events and replays); and through attendance at the DreamArena Extreme, an event hall where the CS 1.6 finals were played on stage and shoutcasted (e-sports commentary) live to 1,100 cheering spectators (with several thousand more watching the live stream online). The CS 1.6 teams and players were involved mostly at the level of ‘‘career’’ or ‘‘professional’’ play (where many players were remunerated in some form).1 Of the 32 teams playing in this tournament, there were 25 ‘‘professional’’ teams representing 13 different countries. The tournament was further populated by the following: 13 teams that qualified through national tournaments (the most distant national qualifiers coming from Malaysia). Three previous DreamHack tournament winners. Six amateur teams that qualified on-site. Three level-unspecified teams. Seven high-profile e-sports franchise teams who were offered a direct invitation to the tournament. As this breakdown illustrates, using the term ‘‘professional’’ or even ‘‘career’’ is tricky in a field of play where there is such variation in the makeup of the field.2 Furthermore, the voiced experiences of a former CS 1.6 professional player, who sat on the E-Sports and Cyberathleticism (2010): European edition player’s panel talk (a workshop run by T. L. Taylor, Emma Witkowski, and Henry Lowood), is included in the study. As a playing researcher, I have played both CS 1.6 and CSS in LAN settings as well as online for several years. Playing has offered a visceral experience of the field of play that the players contend with; a sense of how timing and team- work sits in the body; an experience of focus, accuracy, and body control; as well as a feel for the technologies in play. Accounting for my positionality, it must be noted that I also lean on my experience as a former professional basketball player to con- sider the nuances of sports/e-sports bodies at play.

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